Month: October 2018

The Great Ghoul DuelCredit: Google
It's nearly Halloween, and just as surely as the children will dress up as monsters and demand candy, we've got a new playable Google Doodle on our hands. This year we're working with what the search giant is calling "The Great Ghoul Duel." It's a competitive multiplayer arcade game that's likely to neutralize productivity at work today, especially because you can host private games with your co-workers.
Starting it up is easy: just go to Google.com and click on the banner at the top.
Here's how the game works, on a basic level. You move around with either touch, the arrow keys or the mouse, depending on your platform. It works a little bit like a competitive Pac-Man: you go out into the world and run into blue "sp

A PILOT-turned-MH370-investigator claims he has found satellite images of the missing plane’s engine, tail and cockpit deep in the Cambodian jungle.Using Google Earth, Daniel Boyer found the unusual white objects just 16km from a “crash site” identified by British film producer Ian Wilson last month.Mr Boyer said two of the objects, one measuring 4.3m x 2.7m and another 5.4m in length, match the dimensions for a Boeing 777 engine and cockpit.“I couldn’t believe it when I made the sighting,” he told The Star.“First the cockpit can be seen, and now this.“The debris definitely needs to be investigated.”The second find comes after Mr Wilson spotted a “plane-shaped object” in the jungle south of Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on Google Maps.The compelling image went viral and prompted China to

Google had a big issues years ago, every Google algorithm update was about PageRank and subsequently DA (which is something Google doesn't even have) - it was all about links. Google knew that was an issue. But in the past year or two, espesially since the Medic Update, SEOs have been obsessing around EAT - the messaging within the Google search quality raters guidelines.EAT is not new, it has been in the quality raters guidelines since 2014. I believe Google took notice of the interest amongst SEOs with these documents, and decided in 2015 to release the guidelines publicly.Slowly but surely, SEOs began doing deep dives on the document. We know the document doesn't exactly spell out how the Google ranking algorithms work, but it does explain what type of sites Google wants th...

Search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning has been around for as long as internet users have been using search engines. The attack, which is making a bit of a comeback recently, involves manipulating search engine results to drive users from legitimate websites to sites that serve up malware, identity theft tools and even fake news.In recent weeks, cybersecurity vendor Zscaler has reported an uptick of SEO poisoning attacks. About 10,000 such websites targeted searches about November’s U.S. midterm elections.Same Scheme, Different NameAttackers used various techniques to trick search engines into elevating webpages that serve up pornography, advertising, and political or religious content, the Zscaler researchers reported.“SEO poisoning is a new term for a very old problem: People tryi

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released additional information on its inquiry into the impact of digital platforms on media publishers and their advertising revenue
during the final weeks of preparing a preliminary report that could change the direction of search.Last year Google sent more than 2 billion visitors from its search engine to Australian
news websites.In December 2017, the ACCC was asked to
analyze the way major digital platforms impact media, journalism, and advertising. But the ACCC seems most concerned with Google and its business practices, and how fake news stories could divert
advertising away from true, traditional media.News Corp, for example, had proposed the introduction of a review panel to the Australian government would be intended to

On Sunday, Armonk, New York-based IBM announced that it would be buying Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat for $34 billion -- the largest acquisition in the company's 100+-year history. This seems like too much -- too late. This should have occurred 10 years ago.For me, it's a bittersweet announcement: I used to be an IBMer. I worked there from the summer of 2007 to late 2012 as an IT architect in their GTS/ITS division, primarily in their data center optimization and server consolidation practice, and also in their business continuity (BCRS) division. I was involved with a lot of Linux server virtualization and high-performance computing using systems like Red Hat, S...

There was a lot to like in iOS 12 (including a lot of great secret features) but it also came with problems, including one embarrassing one which remains in iOS 12.0.1. Consequently,
Apple
has now officially announced iOS 12.1 and it’s a big one…
In an official statement, Apple has confirmed iOS 12.1 will contain three major new features for iPhones and iPads as well as one crowd pleaser. It also contains some secrets Apple didn’t announce.
Here are the headliners:
Dual SIM - this is crucial to owners of the new iPhone XS (details), iPhone XS Max (details) and budget-friendly iPhone XR (details). It enables the phones to support a physical sim and eSIM simultaneously. This means owners can have home and work or home and travel numbers operating simultaneously. This fea

Stop. It’s happened again.A photo of a thing – that is definitely a thing – is going viral because it has half the population convinced it is definitely another thing.This time it’s not a white and gold (sorry, blue and black) dress, but a strange black creature that could either be a crow or a cat.Behold: Crow or cat? Image: TwitterWhile at first glance this image, posted on Reddit, looks a lot like a crow - even Google images will tell you that in a reverse image search - it is in fact, upon closer inspection, a black cat.The kitty has just twisted its head in a way that makes its ear appear like a beak in this photo.While it's not sparking the same furious debate as the Yanny/Laurel mind-mess of May, the photo did have many people on social media doing double takes.
pic.twitter.com/L

Technology giants will be forced to pay tax on the sales they generate in the UK, under new plans announced in the Budget.Chancellor Philip Hammond plans to introduce a digital services tax from April 2020 following a consultation.He said "established tech giants" will be targeted rather than start-ups.Companies such as Amazon and Facebook have been criticised for the small amount of tax they pay in the UK.Both the 36-member OECD and the European Commission have been trying to reach a consensus on imposing a digital tax on social media platforms, internet marketplaces and search engines.However, Mr Hammond said that progress was "painfully slow".H...